


Entering Eternity

by arabmorgan



Series: A Little Happiness [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Iron Man 3, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8057176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabmorgan/pseuds/arabmorgan
Summary: Tony is determined to find out why he's being ignored. Loki isn't being very helpful.





	Entering Eternity

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, a shout-out goes to [Lucien_Maes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucien_Maes/pseuds/Lucien_Maes), whose comment about elixirs and spells gave me a _major_ Athena moment (in that this fic sprang to life pretty much fully-formed in my mind in that instant).
> 
> Also, well, I hope this is satisfactory! I have a lot of feelings about mortals being given immortal life, not all of them positive, but I did what I could. It's a happy ending, have no fear! Which means that this will probably be the chronologically last part of this series I'll write; whatever add-ons I dump in Sacred Simplicity will definitely be set before this.

Loki was acting strangely, and that wasn’t just Tony’s Loki-senses talking.

The day Steve – good ol’ Steve who took the concept of _personal privacy_ extremely seriously – commented rather quizzically, “Isn’t Loki coming over?” was the day Tony was validated in his suspicions that Loki was _up to something_.

It hadn’t even started subtly – one day, the god had made the decision to hole himself up in his apartment, and there he had stayed. An entire month had passed with no Tower visits, no walks in the park, no grocery shopping. All Loki was interested in was sitting at his desk either scribbling away madly or playing with sparks of magic and suspicious-looking liquids.

Anytime Tony visited, he was greeted with a discouragingly distracted peck on the lips or cheek, before Loki returned to whatever project was requiring so much attention he couldn’t even spare the time to give his boyfriend a cuddle.

 “What on earth are you _doing_?” Tony had demanded, two weeks into Loki’s self-imposed isolation.

The god had hushed him – _hushed him_ – and muttered, “Something very important,” before completely forgetting Tony’s presence again.

Tony actually felt a little like he was taking care of _himself_ back in the day, when he would get lost in his one of his frenzies of inspiration, staying in his workshop for weeks on end, to the point that he would probably have quite literally died without Pep to bring him his meals each day.

Of course, Loki was highly unlikely to die of starvation, but Tony didn’t let that little fact stop him from forcing the god to eat at least a meal a day anyway. Once, he’d sidled off back into the bedroom after forcibly seating its usual occupant at the dining table, seizing the chance to take a peek at the mess of papers scattered about Loki’s writing desk.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to read a single word _or_ understand a single diagram. He should have seen that coming, but it left an uneasy sensation in his chest anyway.

At least there hadn’t been any talk of moving permanently off-world, but at this point, Tony didn’t think he would be surprised.

For a while, he spent an undue amount of time hammering away in his workshop, fretting that he was about to be dumped. Which was whatever – seriously. He’d been dumped before and he’d handled it _just fine_.

Tabloid-worthy fine.

And then he got over his paranoia and decided that starving Tony out through a lack of affection didn’t quite seem like Loki’s style. Throwing him out of a window or blasting him into tiny pieces seemed far more likely.

After that, he moved on to worrying about whether Loki had gotten himself into some sort of trouble during his travels, which seemed like a fairly reasonable scenario, all things considered. Perhaps he was being hunted down by the alien mafia, who wanted his head or his skin or maybe even his balls, either for revenge or because they would fetch a fortune on the extra-terrestrial black market.

He tested this theory out during one of his visits, hovering impatiently by Loki’s shoulder as the god weaved a complicated string of web-like magic with delicate motions of his fingers. Idly, Tony recalled rather dreamily what it felt like to have those fingers trailing all over his body.

“Are you hiding from space pirates?” he asked, when it looked safe enough to interject without magic blowing up in his face.

Loki tilted the side of his face up to Tony, still poring over his notes with a furrow between his brows. “I am not hiding from anyone,” he said, and Tony couldn’t _not_ believe him when he was so obviously being truthful, if only by virtue of being too preoccupied to concoct an untruth.

“Well, okay. That’s good,” he replied lamely, and retreated to consider the matter further.

The next day, he asked, “Are you doing this research under duress?”

Loki was so engaged in mixing little bottles of god-knew- _what_ that he only looked up about five minutes later, and requested that Tony repeat his question, at which point he said quite simply, “Certainly not.”

It became something of a game, almost. How many questions would he need to ask before he either coaxed the truth out of Loki or came to his own conclusions?

“Are you making a spell?”

“In part.”

“Is it a spell to turn me into a dog again?”

Loki actually stopped at that, turning to Tony with that familiar glimmer of affection in his eyes. “Unfortunately, no,” he replied, sounding amused as he reached out to run his fingers briefly through Tony’s hair. It was the most contact he’d gotten in two months.

“Is it a spell that you’re going to use on yourself?”

“No.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“I certainly hope not.”

“Is it urgent?”

“Quite.”

Finally, Tony gave up and went for the whining route. “Why won’t you just _tell_ me?”

The god’s lips quirked into a small, secretive smile. “I will, once I am successful.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed, and he responded with a neutral, thoughtful, “Hm.”

“Is whatever you’re doing for me?” he asked, after a week of no questions.

There was a beat of silence. “Yes.”

“Will I like it?”

The hesitation this time was slightly more ominous. “I hope so,” Loki said quietly, turning to look up at Tony, determined and earnest and unsure.

“Okay,” he said quietly, because Loki was easy to trust, even when he wasn’t. And that was exactly why he would still be hanging around like a love-struck dummy even if the god ended up working on this ridiculous project for the next thirty years.

This time, when he planted his butt on Loki’s lap and wound his arms around the god’s neck, he managed to get a proper, tongue-tangling kiss in that almost-but-not-quite made up for the sexual drought that had snuck up upon him the day Loki decided to become a bona fide hermit.

Loki broke the kiss with a faint smile that had Tony sighing and clambering off even before the god said, sounding appropriately regretful, “This project really is quite time-sensitive, Tony.”

“Yeah, okay, I get it,” he huffed. He wanted so very much to tell Loki that it was okay to give up sometimes, that sinking into obsession was far from healthy – but he wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to do it.

So he just trailed his fingers along Loki’s shoulder for a moment longer before leaving the room.

The next time he was seized with the overwhelming desire to drag Loki bodily out for some fresh air was when he said with some exasperation, “You do realise it’s been like six _months_ since we last had sex?”

For a moment, Loki looked horrified, and he looked Tony up and down as if he expected him to have withered away after half a year of celibacy.

And then he turned back to his ridiculously tall pile of papers, shuffling a few vials around while muttering in quite a deranged manner all the while. Something about time passing too quickly and general frustrations about how mortals lived or whatnot.

Tony was almost used to it by now, which was a slightly disturbing realisation.

It took a few more minutes for Loki to remember that Tony was still standing right there, and he smiled reassuringly. “It is nearly finished, Tony.” It would have been a little more believable had the god not been sporting a decidedly wild-eyed look, which suggested that ‘nearly finished’ was more of a pipe dream than a concrete fact.

“Okay…?” Tony said slowly.

A month later, he was back to whinging.

“This is really quite an elaborate set-up if you’re trying to break up with me. You can just come out and say it, you know?”

“I have no intention of _breaking up_ with you, as you so eloquently put it. Not now or ever,” Loki said quite firmly. Tony felt a full-sized grin threatening to burst into being, and had to remind himself that he was supposed to be upset with Loki at the moment.

“Is this really more important than I am?”

“It is important _precisely_ because you are very much so.”

Well, there wasn’t very much Tony could say to that. Loki had a way of effortlessly sweet-talking him without imparting any useful information at all.

Finally, eight months after Loki’s descent into seclusion, the god appeared one sunny afternoon in the Tower, interrupting a spirited Xbox match between Clint and, oddly enough, Bruce.

There was a shocked chorus of “Loki!” (and one enthusiastic “Brother!”) all around, as the Avengers took in Loki’s relatively healthy-looking condition. He had just effectively disproved the weakly-circulating rumours that he had, in fact, either died or dumped Tony eight months ago, and that Tony’s daily visits to the god’s apartment were just part of the elaborate lie his brain had constructed in order for him to live in blissful denial.

“You’re not dead,” Clint said, sounding impressed, before he returned to smashing at his controller with furious dexterity.

But Loki only had eyes for Tony, who had stood up the moment the god materialised.

“Tony.” He grabbed the engineer by the shoulders, with an uncharacteristically huge smile on his face and a lack of tension in his limbs that hadn’t been present in a long while. “I must go to Asgard, to speak with the All-Father. I came to say goodbye.”

Tony blinked. “Um, what?”

But Loki only bent, kissed Tony briefly but passionately enough for Thor to avert his gaze, and promptly disappeared in a puff of smoke. Whether he had gone to the Bifrost site or decided to take his own secret shortcuts back to Asgard, Tony was still too in shock to decide.

“I don’t _think_ that was a break-up,” Bruce offered, finally looking away from the screen.

Tony only sighed.

* * *

Things mostly settled down after that.

Loki being off-world was something Tony knew how to handle, even if he didn’t much like it.

Thor, too, made the journey home not long after, and returned within a month with fervent descriptions of Loki’s current skin colour (“not too wan”), outfit (“he has resumed his princely garb!”) and doings, which mostly consisted of storming about Odin’s private study as the two of them carried out one heated discussion after another.

“’Tis nothing to worry about, friend Stark!” Thor reassured him. “Their discourse is of a scholarly nature, although Loki refused to inform me of what matters he had such great need to consult the All-Father about.”

“Thanks, Thor. Hope you enjoyed your visit home.” Tony grinned, patting the big guy on the shoulder.

By the time he was back in his room, the smile had faded into a frown, but he couldn’t deny that the update had taken some of the weight off his chest. The thought of Loki debating with his old man in fine form was quite amusing to contemplate, even if the Odin of his imagination somewhat resembled Santa, although significantly less jolly and with one less eye.

Four months after his abrupt departure, Loki returned just as unexpectedly as he had left, popping into being on a night when Tony was actually trying to fool himself into believing he had a regular body clock. As it was, he just about jumped out of his skin when Loki pushed the door of his bedroom open, and FRIDAY cooperatively brightened the lights.

“What in the – _Loki_!” He gawped for a moment, before sitting up and pushing the covers off just as Loki all but lunged onto him, rolling them over on the bed so that Tony ended up in one of his favourite positions of resting his entire body on the god’s.

“Tony.” Loki’s voice thrummed with barely-concealed excitement, his eyes bright with anticipation. “I have succeeded.” With a flourish, a small glass vial barely three inches tall appeared in the god’s hand, filled with a pale silver liquid.

Gingerly, Tony took the vial and raised it to eye level, lips pressed together contemplatively. “So _this_ is what you’ve been working on. Go on, tell me all about why you basically abandoned me for a _year_ to make this little thing. You’re lucky I didn’t buy a dog and replace you.” He met Loki’s gaze, lips twitching into a smile despite his petulant tone.

Loki raised a finger to Tony’s face, tracing down the bridge of his nose slowly in a way that almost tickled. “You are mortal,” he said quietly. “At most, you would have lived another fifty years –”

Tony’s brows raised. “Even fifty’s being a bit generous, don’t you think?” he cut in, ignoring Loki’s glare.

“ _And_ ,” Loki continued pointedly, “I could not bear to think of losing you so soon. The golden apples of Midgardian lore do not exist, but I thought that I could create a spell, an _elixir_ to grant you – to grant you a little more time.” He trailed off, searching Tony’s expression for a reaction, his expression almost fearful.

“Okay,” Tony said quietly, his face carefully blank. “Keep going.”

Honestly, he wasn’t completely shocked – the suspicion _had_ crossed his mind more than once – but it was still unsettling now that the idea was out in the open.

Loki began speaking again immediately, anxiously. “I thought of the All-Father’s Odinsleep, of the magic that keeps his physical body in stasis no matter how long this period of rest may last, and from there I drew the knowledge that I needed to make _this_.” Loki paused, eyes flicking to the precious elixir in Tony’s hand.

“You have no idea,” he continued breathlessly, one hand unconsciously clutching at Tony’s hip with a bruising grip, “how _afraid_ I was. I feared this would prove to be too difficult a spell to uncover, that I would complete it too late – but much of the basis was already present in the magic that sustains the All-Father in his rest. The All-Father himself commended me for a job well done, when I completed the finishing touches with his aid.”

A strange expression, both derision and pride, flitted across Loki’s face for a bare moment.

Tony let out a shaky breath. “So if I drink this, I live forever, is that it?”

Loki hesitated, then shook his head. “You will not age, yes, but the effects will last for only a decade. You will have to drink another draught to halt the aging process for another ten years.” His voice roughened with every word of the truth he spoke. “It will not be an easy thing, to watch your friends age and perish. I thought – perhaps you might think the grief not worth it, and choose to stop, to age as well. I would not bind you to me for centuries, unhappy and yearning for the past.”

Unsaid, but understood well enough by Tony, was the fear, _perhaps you might think me not worth it._

The love and desperation in Loki’s eyes were easy enough to read, but he was willing to give Tony up to death anyway, if he chose it.

“You’re an idiot,” Tony whispered, and leaned down to give the miserable-looking god a soft kiss.

With a grin that was only slightly nervous, he plucked off the stopper of the vial, careful not to spill a single drop. Exposed to the air, the silver liquid began to swirl lazily, seeming to glitter merrily in the orange glow that lit the room.

He thought about Pep and Rhodey first, then the Avengers, and Happy, and even furious Fury, and he thought about how, somewhere in the back of his mind, he had honestly expected to be the first one to go out of all of them. No one was going anywhere anytime soon, but the pang in his chest was still bittersweet.

He remembered Pep – dear, sweet Pepper – saying through her tears, “I just want you to be _happy_ , Tony,” and he looked down at Loki, who had taken care to provide him with an out anytime he wanted, waiting ever so patiently for Tony to smash his heart to pieces.

“I can’t promise forever,” he said, quite seriously, and Loki nodded like that was all he had expected, “but right now, I’m really not ready to see fifty just yet.”

And he downed the mouthful of liquid in one gulp. It tasted, funnily enough, like apples, and he had a feeling that _that_ little detail had been quite intentional on Loki’s part.

“Also,” he added, playing with a lock of hair curling against the nape of the god’s neck, “I think you’re worth it, a hundred percent.”

A slow, slow smile widened on Loki’s face, naked relief and adoration seeming to light him with vitality from within, as if he had been the one to drink the magic elixir instead of Tony.

Magic elixir, hah. Tony really didn’t know how this was real life.

“By the way,” he said, resting his chin on his hands, “you _are_ going to pass this recipe on to Thor, right?”

Loki huffed, looking adorably sulky. “Perhaps,” he said, which Tony figured was about as close to a ‘yes’ as he would get.

Besides, he had more important matters to see to at the moment. _Much_ more important.

Taking a moment to wriggle into prime position, he slowly ground his hips into Loki’s with as much lewd intent as he could muster. “You, sir, have a year of forced abstinence to make up for,” he purred.

Loki’s eyes flashed darkly with obvious delight.

And they did make up for it – twice over, in fact. Just not all at once, because even magic elixirs didn’t work that way.


End file.
